The Purple Guide to Health, Safety and Welfare at Music and Other Events — Safeguarding Children & Young People[1]
Summary
States in mandatory language that where children are expected, organisers must have a missing and found child policy covering search and the safe care of found children until reunification (§78). All workers including security must be conversant with it (§79), and a clearly advertised, always-supervised collection point should be provided (§80). Requires that children are not left in the sole care of a single worker (§81). Restricts public messaging: PA or open-radio announcements must not give specific or personal details about children such as their names, and worker communication should be face-to-face, by telephone or on a dedicated channel (§83–84). Handover provisions: seek a second opinion, for example from police, where a child is reluctant to go with a collecting adult (§85); a child should not be handed over to a parent who is clearly drunk (§86); signature, proof of identity and the length of separation should be recorded (§87). For events attended predominantly by young teenagers without parents, anticipates separation from companions, missing the transport home and lost phones and money, and recommends a help point, a specified parental meeting place and a staffed message facility (§73, §76–77). For children with specific needs, recommends a quiet or sensory space at a busy event (§56). Contains no child-to-supervisor ratio: numbers in dedicated areas are to be based on space, activities and available supervisory adults, with local authority advice recommended for under-eights (§31–32).
So what
This is the operational answer to the gap our pediatric synthesis names from Thierbach — that 20% of under-tens needing care are unaccompanied, rising to a third of all children, and no US mass-gathering regulation in our 51-jurisdiction survey addresses the consent, identification and reunification problem that creates. Section 86 is the item to carry into clinical teaching: an intoxicated adult presenting to collect a child is a decision point event medical staff will face, with no protocol anywhere in US event medicine. Section 81's two-person rule is a staffing requirement in disguise and extends to an unaccompanied child being treated in a medical tent. Section 83 is counter-intuitive — the instinctive response of broadcasting a lost child's name is the one the guidance restricts, because it tells every listener who is unaccompanied and where to collect them. The absence of a supervision ratio is itself worth recording: anyone citing the Purple Guide for one is citing something that does not exist.